HISTORICITY OF THE MOSAIC TABERNACLE. 



115 



description is unhistorical. It is a very significant admission 

 which Dr. Driver makes at the end of his long discussion 

 to prove that " it does not seem possible to regard the Tent 

 of Meeting, as described by P, as historical," when he says : 

 " Although there are great difficulties in accepting all the 

 details as historical, the general plan and outline of P's 

 tabernacle may rest upon historical tradition to a greater 

 extent than we are aware. There are abundant indications 

 showing that the ritual system of P is a development from old, 

 and in some cases archaic ceremonial usage : and the same, 

 mutatis mutandis, may have been the case with his picture 

 of the tabernacle " (Exodus, pp. 430-1). If that is granted, 

 I fail to see why, if the untenable assumption of the post- 

 exilian origin of the Code is given up, we may not go a good 

 way further, and say that P's picture of the tabernacle goes 

 back to the times when the tabernacle actually existed, and 

 rests on sound historical knowledge. 



Discussion. 



Dr. William Woods Smyth said : We have been privileged to 

 hear this interesting subject treated by a high, if not our highest 

 living authority. And the subject and occasion are singularly in 

 place just after the publication of Canon Driver's work on Exodus. 



It is not sufficiently borne in mind that the Egyptian people, and 

 in considerable degree Israel, at the era of the Exodus had reached 

 a very high state of civilization. Moses was brought up in a court 

 which for culture and refinement surpassed every Imperial and Royal 

 Court in Europe of our time. 



Again, Israel in their Exodus " spoiled the Egyptians," and the 

 wealth of Egypt at this time, only after the Rameses period, was 

 enormous. And they owed it all to Israel because of long unpaid 

 labour. This great wealth supplied everything embodied in the 

 Mosaic Tabernacle. 



While we acknowledge the importance and utility of Professor 

 Orr's interesting paper, I must express my regret that Professor 

 Orr should have adopted the theory of J.E.P. documents, when 

 so great an authority as Professor Eerdmanns, now in the chair of the 

 redoubtable Kuenen, throws them overboard. Where is the use of 

 placing any reliance upon a hypothesis, which is based on the 



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